Motley Moose – Archive

Politico is reporting (and Jeffrey Toobin is confirming) that Stanford Law Professor Pam Karlan will become Deputy Assistant Attorney General for voting rights in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.  This position is NOT subject to Senate confirmation.

Professor Karlan is one of the leading liberal Constitutional scholars and, at 54, would make a great choice for the next vacancy on the Court, but her taking this position is important not just for her professional development, but because it ensures that voting rights will be front and center at DOJ as we enter the crucial period where DOJ will be challenging states like Texas and North Carolina on their new restrictive voting laws.

Predictably, right wing heads are already exploding.  At PJ Tattler, they describe her as a “dishonest radical”.

Crossposted at The Daily Kos

“Elections Matter”.

I know … I know. Trite and overstated. But yesterday it struck me again just how much elections matter.

In June, the Supreme Court of the United States (also known as Ginni Thomas’ excellent stick with which to beat cash out of donors for partisan political activities), struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That section identified 11 states and sundry counties which Congress had decided must get permission before they changed any voting laws. Many of us were understandably upset by that and even more upset at the reasoning of the Chief Justice John Roberts that we are post-racial and that states setting up barriers to minority voting is so 1950s last year yesterday.

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrat, signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Handing the Pen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The new law of the land:

SEC. 2. No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.